I really hope it doesn't die off this year, I've only just started to post here properly now!
In all seriousness, I think the two big questions that will ultimately decide the fate of the Escapist are these:
1) Are new content creators going to actually be able to produce and maintain high quality material?
2) Are readers going to be willing to accept a potential downgrade in quality from the big draws no longer working for the site?
Both are kind of important. Some of my thoughts on each question:
For the first one, it ultimately requires new content creators to be brought in first. From what I've heard, that is indeed happening, so we're basically caught in a transition period while the new content creators are being sorted out. However, there has to be some degree of pay off when the new content creators start: if they don't put out anything of any interest, then the site's not going to start recovering from the loss of guys like Jim Sterling and (as much as I personally wasn't fond of him) Movie Bob. Ideally, the pay off needs to be immediate enough that people will be willing to keep returning to the new guys and not write them off from their first article/video on the site, but, if it takes a few weeks for them to start really getting into the swing of things, I imagine most people will start to come around to them.
The old content creators on the site (like Yahtzee) are important to hold onto while the site is in the transition phase and while the new guys are finding their feet, though. If Yahtzee (since he's the sole remaining draw for a lot of people) goes before the new guys arrive, then I don't see a lot of people sticking around. And, if nobody likes the new content creators at all even after a grace period to allow them to get into the swing of things, then they REALLY have to hold onto Yahtzee, as he's going to be one of the people holding the site up.
Ultimately, the big potential issue is whether the new content creators can maintain the ability to regularly produce high quality content. I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with me, but, speaking from my own experience with writing music reviews and local radio, it can be tough to write about stuff if you don't have a real opinion about it, find it dull (Whyzdom's recently album hasn't been reviewed by me AT ALL for that same reason) or loath it so much that you don't want to finish it and it can be tough to have to continue producing stuff every week, as it stops feeling exciting after a period of time and eventually starts feeling like a chore (I know I can't focus on metal music for too long because I lose interest in talking about it constantly, so I tend to get around it by covering stuff in other styles of music every once in a while, and I will occasionally have a lazy week or two on air where I just select a bunch of songs I like and keep my discussion to just saying basically "I like this track"). If the new content creators can maintain their passion for what they do AND can produce high quality content even when they don't want to do it at all, then everything should be fine, but, if not...well, things will only get worse when that starts to shine through in their stuff. Hopefully, The Escapist has been smart enough to get content creators who already have some degree of experience with coping with a weekly schedule and not pulled people completely out of nowhere, as that means this is unlikely to become an issue!
For the second question, we ultimately have to consider who were the big draws of the site. I came here about a year ago, which was after some of the big names had already left the site, but I was able to recognize that Zero Punctuation and Jimquisition were the big draws for me very quickly. Both got me coming back every week just to catch up on them and the departure of Jim left me feeling like I didn't have a lot of reasons to frequent the site any more. Movie Bob DID get my interest at first, but, after his review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I just swore off him entirely, and I have liked what I've seen of No Right Answer, but, for the most part, I've politely stuck with what I've liked due to not having enough free time to check out the other guys and not really being interested enough to see what their stuff is. I'm willing to give new content creators a chance, but they have to live up to the standards of Jimquisition and Zero Punctation.
I'm guessing that this is going to be the case for a lot of people here (along with a few other names who I'm genuinely unaware of: feel free to PM me some of their stuff if you want to!), so the new content creators have to be able to live up to quite a few people. However, the key question is whether people will be willing to stick around if the final result is a downgrade. I'm not saying that we have to accept people putting out terrible content by this: I'm saying that, if the content creators are good, but don't live up to the high standards of their predecessors, are people going to stick around or are people going to bail because of the site not being as good as it used to be? I'd like to say that people won't, as we've still got people here now (heck, I nearly left, but I've posted more in the last few weeks than I'd posted in months!), but, from my own experience, people want to be blown away when something new is presented to them and, if they aren't, they won't come back to it, so I don't doubt that there will be a lot of loud (and possibility vitriolic) debate when the new content creators start coming in, regardless of how they do overall, if they are perceived as not living up to the legacies of those who have come before.
This doesn't mean the site is going to close because of the new content creators, obviously. However, if the site is already struggling with the smaller viewership, then the arrival of the new content creators is not going to make things better unless they have a large and already established fanbase of their own. Which won't necessarily make things better either: if the new content creator's fans try to pull the "true fan" card or create a flame war between fans of other content creators on the site, things will get messy very quickly! This isn't an easy one to answer, but I would like to think that most people would be OK with a potential downgrade in quality from Jimquisition and Movie Bob if the new content creators are at least good enough to get people going "Well, at least they're enjoyable to watch!"
Arguably, a third question exists in the form of "Will the site focusing on gaming media over a variety of geek media help with readership?", but, since most people probably focus on the gaming stuff here, that's not going to be a big issue for most people!
Overall, my opinion is that The Escapist is NOT going to die, but it's caught in a transition period at the minute which could lead to the site dying if the transition is handled poorly, the new stuff isn't good enough to win people over to it and/or they take too long to get the new content creators to start posting stuff on the site. At the minute, all we can really do is wait and see. I'm not going to say that I'm bailing from the site, as I thought I would when Jim left and I'm still here now, but the lack of news on the new content creators is certainly a valid cause for concern. The hole left by the absence of so many content creators is large enough as it is, but the impact of it now is certainly being felt, at least to me, and the time it's taken for even hints of the identities of new content creators to start to appear has only made me feel that the hole's quietly getting bigger and nobody wants to point this elephant in the room out.
So long!
